Words can never fully express...

I feel that I have so much to say – I have left posting for too long! I wasn’t able to get to the internet as I was on outreach this past weekend, which was absolutely amazing and eye opening all at once. Classes have been good as well, but I will leave writing about that for another post. Outreach was a wild 2 hour drive out of the city area to a remote village that has no running water or electricity. All the houses are mud huts with grass roofs – these people are ingenious and can make shelter out of nothing, as they have nothing. All the children, and even adults were malnourished, it was hard to see. The signs are a distended stomach and lighter colored head hair. At night when we set up floodlights for the film you could see the dirt being kicked up by the wind and it definitely explained the reason why we were so extremely dirty after only three days. Our reason for visiting the village was a spiritual focus, there are other outreaches that include medical teams but we didn’t have one along at this time. The village has a church and a pastor that is connected to the organization I am with, and that is how we were invited to come and show the film about Jesus. We also visited houses in the village in the daytime and talk to people and if they wanted – pray for healing. These people lack even basic medicine so their main complaints seemed to be caused by worms/parasites and skin problems like scabies. We did see a few healings for prayer – one lady came back the next day and told us her baby we prayed for was better. God is still good in the midst of suffering.
My favorite moment was sitting with the village women sifting through rice to remove any husks for our lunchtime meal. They showed us how to do it and then taught us some of their songs, and asked us to teach them a Portuguese song – we didn’t know any but enjoyed learning theirs. One thing about visiting was that our Portuguese didn’t really help us, most of the people only speak Macua.
The Saturday afternoon we got our group together and prayed for the village, for the spiritual atmosphere, and really felt a shift – it was amazing! That was the most lasting thing that I think we could have left for them. Ultimately there is not much we can do in our own humanness, which is why we are so heavily relying on God to see provision occur.